Kalenjin

Kalenjin is the principal Southern Nilotic language of the East African highlands, a close chain of dialects often called Nandi-Markweta or Elgeyo. Its speakers trace a migration from the Nile Valley and the Ethiopian highlands, which gathered pace from the eleventh century as pastoral communities spread through the grasslands of Uganda and western Kenya. Long contact with Cushitic peoples left loanwords connected with cattle and social organization, together with the age-set system and circumcision rites.

In the Kenyan Rift Valley these herders built the Elmenteitan and then the Sirikwa pastoral traditions, with fortified homesteads and stone circles, before Sirikwa communities joined the Nandi, Kipsigis and Pokot polities.

The Laparanat drought of about 1785 and the Aoyate dry period that peaked in the 1830s scattered the older Chemwal and Maliri groups. The ensuing Iloikop wars against the Maasai redrew the pastoral map around 1800.